I decided to reconnect my external display to the iMac over the weekend as I have a spare power socket again.

I've got my iMac set to extend the desktop to the second display, on the right hand side.

The problems I've run into now are that if I use Spaces, my 4 spaces include my extended desktop. This makes it pretty ugly, but also a bit less functional because the spaces are so small. I liked having the screen broken down into quarters, but still be able to see what is on each space because of the size of the 24" display.

Second, I've also noticed if I try to share the screen from the macbook I now get an unreadable screen with the extended desktop. It's unreadable because with the extended desktop attached to the window, everything is soooooooo small.

So, does anyone know of a method to toggle the extended screen to be part of or not a part of spaces/screen sharing?

I'd rather not have to disable the second monitor because its very helpful to the way i use my machine.

Cheers

Change the resolution on the second screen .

I actually don't like menubar items but I put the Displays one in so that I can change the external monitors resolution quickly and easily.

As to your other problem, sorry can't help you there. AFAIK this is always the way with Apple.

Even ARD will show the second screen when connected to it on old versions (2.0). This made it hard when you are using an iBook G4 14" to control an iMac 17" with a 15" external....

i have the displays in my menubar already, but i'm not about to go changing resolution each and every time i want to do something remotely or with spaces. how is that productive??

silly me, the clever sods at apple have actually included a view option in the screen sharing menu bar...you can choose to view both displays, or choose a specific display to share - ie display 1 and display 2. very happy with this now non-issue